Introduction
9
disposition to
use
them are not much use, so critical thinking is about disposi-
tions as well. On this view, critical thinking, as both skills and dispositions, is
mainly about the development of the
individual.
We might call this the
indi-
vidual dimension
of critical thinking. For the most part, it embodies a sense
of critical thinking being rather narrowly bounded, working within, say, the
frames of thought that characterize different disciplines (and making reasoned
judgments within those frameworks).
However, theorists who promulgate what has become known as critical ped-
agogy think that critical thinking is more about
changing matters,
and here
changing society as much as if not more than individual students, Such an
approach is fired by concerns about society, its conditions of social oppres-
sion (as it advocates perceive them), its ideologies, and its fundamental ineq-
uities. They regard truth claims, for example, “not merely as propositions to
be assessed for their truth content, but as part of systems of belief and action
that have aggregate effects within the power structures of society. It asks first
about these systems of belief and action,
who benefits
?” (italics in the original,
Burbules and Berk 1999, 47). Their focus is on the social and political
function-
ing
of arguments and reasoning and their wider frames of thought. Questioning
power relationships in society that lie behind forms of thought must, they
argue, be considered a central part of critical thinking (Kaplan 1991).
Scholars who write about what has become known as critical democratic
citizenship education offer a yet further account of critical thinking. Given
that critical thinking has a social and political dimension, it is not unrea-
sonable for it to have a dimension of interpersonal socially appropriate
car-
ing
as well (Noddings 1992). In order to cultivate critical citizens, they argue,
“instructional designs are needed that do not capitalize on applying tricks of
arguing, nor on the cognitive activity of analyzing power structures, but con-
tribute . . . in a meaningful and critical way in concrete real social practices and
activities” (Ten Dam and Volman 2004, 371). They argue that learning to think
critically should—in part at least—be conceptualized as “the acquisition of the
competence to participate critically in the communities and social practices of
which a person is a member” (Ten Dam and Volman 2004, 375). This kind of
educational aim, naturally, has an impact on the development of critical char-
acter and
virtue.
A good “citizen,” they suggest, should be a socially adept and
virtuous person, caring in nature, with the capacity to consider the interests
and needs of humanity. On this view, critical thinking has
moral
as well as
cultural characteristics. We might call this the
sociocultural dimension
of criti-
cal thinking.
Both the individual and the sociocultural dimensions can be given a place,
and reconciled, in a single model of critical thinking in higher education. We
see here two dimensions as separate and distinguishable axes or vectors that
account for very different, equally important, aspects of critical thinking. To
9781137378033_02_int.indd 9
3/3/2015 5:02:10 PM
